Rula Halawani
The Wall. 2005
Video installation
The artist about her work
I started documenting the wall atmost from when they started building it, but each time I developed the pictures, all that showed was its ugliness and my anger. Then the wall reached Qalandia checkpoint. They started building it right in the middle of the road, my road to work. I had always fantasised that one day we would plant trees in the middle of that road. Once it reached Qalandia, the wall reached me and found my fear. They put down the wall's foundations, stopped for a while, and then put it up block by block along the middle of the road.
I wanted to photograph the wall at night. Maybe to let it know I wasn't scared. I went. The wall was so ugly, and the land sad and scarred. There were only soldiers, heavy machines, and the sound of dogs barking. I was terrified and desolate. I took the photographs during the daytime, but my memory of that night was in them.
After I finished the project, one night¬–and I do not know why–I suddenly felt I needed to see the wall. It was the Jewish New Year. It was almost midnight, but I got in my car and went back. I drove all along the wall and arrived back at where I was my first night there, at the place with the heavy machines and the barking dogs. They were all locked up. I enjoyed the scene. I returned home through the Mount of Olives, where I first stepped foot on this earth, my earth. I got out and looked and made a promise, a promise to my Land.
© Rula Halawani. Published in the catalogue of Sharjah Biennial 7, 2005.
© Photos: Haupt & Binder, Universes in Universe
Part 3 of the Sharjah Biennial 7 photo tour, 6 April - 6 June 2005. President & Chief Director: Hoor Al Qasimi. Curator: Jack Persekian; Co-curators: Ken Lum and Tirdad Zolghadr. 70 participants.